Chris Botti concert benefits MPUSD music, Youth Arts Collective

Two programs on the Monterey Peninsula have one of those problems that's good to have — too much demand.

The Monterey Peninsula Unified School District's music program is rebuilding after it was taken out of the elementary schools during the recession. Music is back for fourth- and fifth-graders, but now there are more interested students than there are instruments.

The Youth Arts Collective, an artists' studio for 14- to 22-year-olds, keeps getting calls from parents of children as young as 10 who want to join. A periodic workshop to serve the younger kids just isn't enough.

The Monterey Rotary Club decided to step up for both programs, organizing a benefit concert Saturday featuring Grammy Award-winning jazz trumpeter Chris Botti.

"Mr. Botti ... cares a lot about this stuff," said Rotary Club member David Lee. "He travels all over the world, he performs 300 nights a year and he wants to come, he wants to do this. He's coming on a Saturday night — in the music business that's the biggest time."

"I'm incredibly excited to be performing in Monterey," said Botti, who played in the city for another benefit for Rotary International in 2009. "It's very important to me to find ways to inspire kids and persuade them to put down their video games, turn off the Internet and pick up an instrument."

Botti is playing two shows at the Hyatt Regency Monterey. The 6 p.m. set is sold out, but tickets are still available for the 9 p.m. show. And it's all profit at this point, said Lee, meaning tickets sold so far have already covered the costs of putting on the concert. If the event gets a sellout crowd, Lee expects the proceeds to reach up to $75,000. The bulk of that will be split between MPUSD and the Youth Arts Collective, with the rest going to other arts organizations.

"Look what people are doing for them, who don't know them personally," said Meg Biddle, co-founder of the Youth Arts Collective, about the outpouring of community support for the young artists and musicians. "They believe in them."

Rebuilding

When MPUSD took music out of the elementary schools during the height of the recession in 2008, "it suffered all through the secondary level," said Superintendent Dan Albert. The reason is simple: If they don't start young, they're less likely to start at all.

But with more funding in the past couple of years, MPUSD reinstituted instrumental music in the fifth grade. Last year, music teacher Jim Paoletti used private donations to start a recorder program for fourth- graders, with the last three schools getting set up this year.

Recorders are good starter instruments, introducing skills such as music reading, fingering and dexterity.

"So now the students who got involved with just the recorders are now thinking, 'Wow, I can read music, I can do this, I enjoy this, what's the next step?'" said Ruben Zepeda, assistant superintendent of secondary education. "So when they get into grade five, they start thinking, 'Oh, I'm going to play the cello or I'm going to play a brass instrument or I'm going to play a violin and get involved in orchestra.'"

What that means, though, is that demand has

outstripped supply. Students are having to share instruments, so they can't take them home to practice. Some instruments are simply unworkable.

The goal, then, is to have an instrument for every student — flutes, saxophones, clarinets, trumpets and violins are high on the list. Also wanted: a keyboard and amplifier at every school. Paoletti, who teaches at all eight elementary schools in the district, totes around one keyboard and amp from site to site. He visits two to three schools a day.

"At one time, our music programs at MPUSD were the tops," Albert said. "... We need to retool what we've lost."

MPUSD will match whatever money is brought in by Saturday's concert.

What it's all about

The poster for the concert, which features a trumpet transforming into a calla lily, was created by Angela Bomarito, a member of the Youth Arts Collective since August 2010.

To the Rotary's Lee, it symbolizes "a rejuvenation of the arts." To Biddle, it's proof of what the Youth Arts Collective can help its members achieve.

YAC's motto is "Do art. Be kind." The goal is to "guide them to their best selves, with that sense of gratitude, so that they can end up giving forward, backward, sideways," said Biddle. "And this is what Angela did. She was thrilled to do this."

The poster will be for sale at the concert. It's the first commercial piece for Bomarito, an 18-year-old studio art student at Monterey Peninsula College. She had already built up a following thanks to a couple of public art displays she was able to do through YAC. Biddle helped guide her through the process, a mentorship model that extends even to graduates of the collective.

"We really get to know them, so that when they go away, guess what, we're still mentoring them," she said. "I get calls, texts that go, 'OK, I got the mural job, now what do I do?'"

The collective currently serves youth from Santa Cruz to Soledad. Students are required to come at least twice a week for three to four hours each time. Nearly 600 students have come through its doors in the 14 years it's been open, and graduates have gone on to some of the best art institutes in the country.

Biddle and co-founder Marcia Perry will use the concert's proceeds to add more workshops by visiting artists, who come in and talk about their experiences. "One conversation can change a life," Biddle said.

They also want to make their Teach Across Generations program for 8- to 14-year-olds a Saturday staple. It started as a pilot program in summer and had its first official class in February.

When Perry heard the collective would be a beneficiary of the concert, "I just thought that was one of the most wonderful compliments YAC has been paid in the community."

"This is a way outside the box kind of a thing," Lee said. "Fortunately there are a lot of people in the club who are committed to doing this."